


Actually

by somekindofseizure



Series: WTID Supplemental Reading [16]
Category: The Fall (TV 2013), The X-Files
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-19 00:04:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14224761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somekindofseizure/pseuds/somekindofseizure
Summary: Anonymous asked:scully’s cashmere hoodie in ms4? she stole that shit from stella. or it was a gift. all i know is that cashmere + hoodie = stella gibson is behind this+ With the one about crying.





	Actually

“This is so fake,” Stella says.

She is wearing an impossibly soft grey sweater with a hood, has one cashmered arm propped up behind her head and her feet crossed long in front of her. They are watching a movie Scully picked, one of her favorites, a British holiday hit she can’t believe Stella hasn’t seen, but then again… she can.

“It’s not fake,” Scully tells her. “It’s just romantic.”

There is about a foot of bed between them, an expanse Scully would like to close. They get so little time together that she craves contact when they do. But contact between friends who’ve had sex cannot be a given, so it is always carefully navigated. It has to come across platonically, has to be clear it’s not about sex – this is easier for her than Stella, of course, so it usually begins with her. It reminds her, sometimes, of the separate motel room years, the single wall between her and Mulder they held sacred on behalf of… of what? Eventually they got together and it made all that time seem wasted. Now he is the wall, the reason.

“When did this come out?” Stella asks.

“I don’t know, a couple years ago.”

“I should have known by the title.”

“Why? Because it has the word love in it?”

“No. I like love, actually.”

Scully watches her smirk at her little joke and tug one of the thick drawstrings that crawls out the hood the way she normally tugs strands of her own hair. Scully reaches out for a feel of the fabric, fabric never meant to describe or qualify the word hoodie.

“How much does something like this cost?”

“You don’t want to know,” Stella says, seeming to half-ignore her and she knows it’s not because she doesn’t enjoy the gory details of overly-indulgent shopping habits. She’s paying attention to the film even if she won’t admit liking it.

“Come here,” Scully says and tugs the string so that Stella follows it, rolls with the little grunt of someone who’s been stiff in one position - or has been on an international flight for five hours, tolerated New York sideways in December for half a day, and then lying in one position - too long. She puts her head on Scully’s chest and her arm loosely across her body. Scully circles her head with an elbow, takes over playing with the string beneath Stella’s chin. Stella and her sweater are a welcome blanket over her thin t-shirt. She hopes to keep Stella’s scoffing and groaning and complaining to a minimum by keeping her so close.

The new position reduces Stella’s critique. Sometimes, Scully can even feel her body shake as she quietly hides a laugh.

“I hate Christmas, you know,” Stella says, about three-quarters of the way through.

“Yes, I do. The consumerism, the crowds, etcetera.”

“No, it’s not just that. Memories. From when I was a child.”

This is so rare, this mention of any sort of personal trauma that Scully almost chokes on the simple fact of her next breath. But it is an opportunity to know her friend better and in almost ten years, she can count those opportunities on two hands.

“Because of when your father died?”

“Well, yes, that was bad. But before that, they fought their worst fights on holidays. The buying of gifts always instigated that. What I should have, what I deserved.”

And suddenly, Scully wishes she could buy her friend a thousand cashmere hoodies.

“I’m not sure what was worse, when he was there to fight with her or when he was gone,” Stella muses. “Actually.”

Scully can’t bring herself to smile this time at the wordplay, but she does get the hint that the discussion is over.

“You know what, we don’t have to watch this,” she says.

“No, it’s all right.”

Lest Scully think she actually has come around, she explains:

“It’s mind-numbingly stupid and bears no resemblance to life.”

Scully bats her eyebrows at the ceiling and takes the blow on the film’s behalf as Stella once again falls silent. Her head rests easy on Scully’s breast, breath so relaxed, she thinks she may have fallen asleep. Just as well, she thinks, because she often cries at the part coming up. The music swells. Liam Neeson takes the little boy to the airport to confess his love to the girl he likes. She can never resist thinking, And his mother’s dead and he’s okay and he taught him how to love and that is the best gift, can hear herself internally blubbering it already, tries to head off the reaction by anticipating it. 

“This is my favorite part,” she mutters.

“Silly,” is all Stella says.

A moment later, Scully feels a drop of water on her hand and looks down. Stella’s hair is hidden in the back of the hood, and her golden head looks particularly round with the ashiest stripes pushed around her ears and tucked away. Scully can’t quite see her face, and for a moment thinks it’s drool or her imagination - there is no interruption to her breathing pattern or tone of voice, no fidgeting.

Another drop on her t-shirt, then three. Tears are streaming onto Scully’s shirt as the little boy slides under the security gate and gets to the girl. She wants to cry too, or laugh, but mostly she is panicked. She has never seen Stella cry before.

“I like this sweater a lot,” she says, trying to deflect, wishing to God she could just turn the thing off, wishing she’d never chosen it. 

Stella suddenly sits up, erases all evidence of feeling with two flat swipes of hand, and pulls the sweater over tiny camisole. She pushes it at Scully.

“Here, have it.”

“What are you—“

“I want you to. Please.”

Her shoulders are rounded and strong from winter lap swims, her nipples slightly visible beneath the shirt. Her hair tousles kissably as it drops into place. Scully resists the urge to protest the gift, resists the urge to question it, resists the urge to tell Stella she deserves all her nice things and more. She drags it in a thick lump to her side of the bed. 

Satisfied, Stella resumes the position and takes her place in Scully’s arms, this time weighing much less.


End file.
